David Wertime

ChinaFile Fellow

David Wertime is the co-founder of Tea Leaf Nation, an English-language website that analyzes Chinese media. Founded in December 2011, Tea Leaf Nation was acquired in September 2013 by the Foreign Policy Group, a division of the Washington Post Company.

Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump declared victory following his 12-day Asia trip. On the campaign trail, Trump had repeatedly promised to stop making nice with his country’s adversaries; now, thanks to his efforts, he proclaimed, “America is...

When news this morning reached us that Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo had died, we invited all past contributors to the ChinaFile Conversation to reflect on his life and on his death. Liu died, still in state-custody, eight years into his 11-...

On the evening of February 9, U.S. President Donald Trump had what the White House described in a&nbsp;terse readout&nbsp;as a “lengthy” and “cordial” telephone conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping. That alone is newsworthy, as the...

On January 11, during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, U.S. Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson raised eyebrows in Washington when he said, “We’re going to have to send China a clear signal that first the...

“Friendship” is everywhere in China, at least when it comes to dealing with foreigners. International societies are friendship associations. The stores once accessible only to foreign currency holders were called Friendship Stores. Provincial cities...

Protesters in southern China are up in arms. They feel that Beijing’s promises that they’d be able to vote for their own local leaders have been honored in the breach. They’re outraged at the show of force in the face of peaceful protest, and...

On Tuesday, delegates to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, chose Donald J. Trump as their nominee for President of the United States. We asked a range of contributors how the Republican Party should approach China policy.

Lu Wei, the often combative Chinese official known as China’s “Internet Czar,” will step down, and is to be replaced by a former deputy of Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The personnel change comes after a period of mounting restrictions on China’s...

They are the most hated group in Chinese cyberspace. They are, to hear their ideological opponents tell it, “fiercely ignorant,” keen to “insert themselves in everything,” and preen as if they were “spokesmen for the country.” Westerners bemoan...

The overseas wealth of several relatives of senior Chinese leaders has come to light in an International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) report, part of the analysis by a group of media outlets of more than 11 million documents leaked...

On April 3, the Washington, D.C.-based non-profit International Committee of Investigative Journalists dropped what struck many as a bombshell: news that a leaked trove of 11.5 million previously secret files from Panama-based law firm Mossack...

On December 20, a tidal wave of red dirt and construction waste descended on Guangming New District, part of the Chinese southern megacity of Shenzhen, burying whole buildings and sending residents scrambling in fright. Those facts, captured in...

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Out of 30,006 votes cast, 71.7% support abrogating the one-child policy, and only 28.3% want to keep it.&nbsp;The poll was conducted after a study by the&nbsp;China Development Research Foundation emerged, recommending an abolition of the current one-child policy by 2015 to allow every couple to have two children.&nbsp;

First Lady Michelle Obama knew she was speaking to the American electorate when she took the stage yesterday at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Charlotte, North Carolina. But she may not have known the size–or, it turns out, the enthusiasm–of her Chinese audience.

I’ve already been in the U.S. for a long time. I regret that choice. We’ve been [fooled] by Western media the whole time, making us think that the U.S. is a modernized country. Harboring hopes of studying American modern science in order to serve my motherland, I moved heaven and earth in order to make it over to this “superpower.” But the result...

As the Chinese Internet hurtles headlong into an uncertain future, the country’s legal system struggles to catch up. Pressed for time, the government’s reaction may be to fashion the legal equivalent of a blunt axe, rather than a finely crafted scalpel, against lawsuits filed by private citizens involving censorship on the Internet. The possible...

How can a little girl be a “prostitute?” Many in China are asking this question after a set of government officials in Lueyang, Shaanxi province, were caught having sex with a minor but found guilty of the lesser crime of “patronizing an underage prostitute” (嫖宿幼女罪) rather than statutory

Contrary to previous understandings, posts with negative, even vitriolic, criticism of the state, its leaders, and its policies are not more likely to be censored. Instead, we show that the censorship program is aimed at curtailing collective action by silencing comments that represent, reinforce, or spur social mobilization, regardless of content...

Ms. Wu, once among the richest women in China, was sentenced to death in January by a provincial court for illegally accumulating over RMB380 million, or about US$60 million, through a combination of loansharking and Ponzi schemes directed at (mostly wealthy) individuals and families. Wu then enjoyed a tidal wave of citizen and netizen discontent...

It’s one tragedy after another. After Mianyang, Sichuan suffered in the horrible earthquake of 2008, millions of RMB were donated to rebuild a local school. Now, that school has suffered not from a quake, but from greed. With over 16,000 re-posts since its appearance, its ruined husk is Sina Weibo’s most viral image of May 21, 2012 according to...